Freeze Frame

A closer take on the hottest solutions from November

Staff -- Interior Design, 11/1/2002 12:00:00 AM

1. Wood Work

To shade a New York apartment's roof garden, Graftworks principals Lawrence Blough and John Henle designed a trellis of cantilevered beams that project from 4 to 8 feet. "Stainless-steel rods act as a net and prevent each individual piece from racking," says Blough. For support, a curved Douglas fir glulam beam sandwiching steel plates was assembled on-site from premade segments small enough to fit in the elevator. Cedar for the high fence along one side of the roof also arrived in shorter lengths. The architects stained the 6-foot and 18-inch slats in two colors for variation and pulled the tongue-and-groove joints apart 1 1/8 inch. The cutaway detailing "breaks down scale of the fence and defines the layering of it," says Henle. "Top Form," page 178. —J.R.

2. Clouds of Glass

Figuratively speaking, Fabio Novembre took the Bisazza showroom out of metropolitan Milan and transported the 1,800-square-foot interior to the Mediterranean isle of Capri. He used bold forms and the company's glass mosaic tile to establish analogies both to the terrain of the island and to its built icon, the Casa Malaparte. References begin at the entry, where the designer created a curved wall leading into the showroom proper and embellished the surface with a mottled mosaic in blue, cream, and white. The treatment is meant, he says, to represent a "big cloud embracing the famed villa." Novembre hand-mixed the colors, using Bisazza's 3 1/4-inch square Vetricolor tile. "Dreaming of Capri," page 144. —E.C.

3. The Great Divide

For Levi Strauss & Co.'s New York showroom and offices, Studios Architecture managing principal Todd DeGarmo designed a monumental wall to separate a presentation room, where training sessions and fashion rollouts take place, from the main circulation corridor. Like the ever changing nature of the clothing displayed nearby, the partition addresses questions of permanence and mutability, explains Linda Jacobs, associate on the job. Made of walnut-finished slats and canted forward by 1 foot, the floor-to-ceiling treatment encompasses a series of six doors that pivot individually. Beyond the doors, the slats continue to wrap a corner of the 40,000-square-foot floor plate. "Jeans Scene," page S32. —M.G.